


i'll love you forever if i ever love at all

by irnan



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No, it's OK, this makes a change," said Tony. "I realise that's kind of inappropriate under the circumstances but look, you're actually grinning, it must be OK, so yeah, this makes a change, Pepper Potts being the one the crisis is centered on. This is where I step up to the plate and prove I'm not as flaky as I have been throughout the movie so far. OK, you might need to have a Plan B for that, because hello, it's me. But yeah."</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll love you forever if i ever love at all

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Gaslight Anthem; this picks up on Pepper-related themes from "yet turning stay" as well as "yes and back again". Excessive number of references to classic Eighties movies.
> 
>  
> 
> ALSO. ETA. This is now sort of the rewrite version, because it was pointed out in the comments said that it was coming across like Pepper was the one in the wrong re: her opening argument with Sarah, which, NO, SELF, not what you meant at all, Sarah's basically being a bit of an idiot kid in this scenario (and also I hope it comes across that she's not really been brought up to think very well of, like, the corporate world and business people in general) and I'd sort of be interested in the way you guys think that comes across now, having pounded the relevant passages into something resembling greater clarity.

  
"You've got your face on," said Sarah, smiling.

"Contemplating the effort I'd have to go to in order to rain death and destruction down on whatsherface at the disgusting rag," said Pepper.

Sarah twirled her fork in her spaghetti. "You mean Vanessa Twitterton at the Bugle who claimed she had reliable inside information that you and Tony were on the verge of breaking up and followed that by detailing his kinky and unnatural sexual practices?"

Pepper blinked. "Erm," she said.

"My mother called."

"From San Francisco?"

"She uses the Internet now, I'm really proud. You're a bad influence."

Pepper chewed on that for a minute. "I don't know what's worse," she said at last. "The fact that the entire English-speaking world is now privy to what they suppose are my kinky and unnatural sexual practices or that your mother apparently thinks you're catching them off me."

Sarah grinned. "I told her, Mom, I've only met the guy like five times. But whatever. It didn't help. Once Mom thinks someone's depraved - and coming from a former hippy, that takes a lot of work; but, you know, she doesn't really want me in New York anyway. She thinks I'm being corrupted just by being here, she thinks I oughta be out saving the environment like Marshall on _How I Met Your Mother_ , copyright law is the tool of the capitalist devil. She doesn't like anything about my life."

"Oh, quite." Pepper was feeling understandably snippish. A third glass of that lovely Rioja would help.

It was almost a good enough excuse for missing the bitterness in Sarah's when she talked about her mother.

"But I think," added Sarah offhandedly, "Mom was a lot more curious about that thing with Goliath Bank and how you apparently got the CEO fired and funnelled his billion-dollar fortune into SI's R&D accounts. I know I was."

"As if they needed it," said Pepper disgustedly. "I gave the account information to the IRS like any good citizen."

Sarah put her cutlery down with a sharp clatter. Pepper looked up in surprise.

"You did that?" she said.

"Yes."

"The guy has five kids, a wife -"

"The guy," said Pepper, looking puzzled, "has spent the better part of the last ten years skimming the cream off the accounts my subsidiary held at that bank."

"It's a -"

"Victimless crime? You're a lawyer, don't be naive."

Sarah's jaw dropped. "I'm not!" She stopped to draw a breath, take a long swallow of her own wine. "I'm not being naive. I'm saying, you destroyed everything he had. He's beggared, he won't even be able to afford to send his kids to college -"

"That's if he gets out of gaol at any point in the next twenty years -"

"- and I just didn't think that you'd agree to it, no matter what Tony -"

" _Tony_?" Pepper repeated, voice rising so sharply that several other diners in the restaurant turned to stare, that Sarah fell into silence with a surprised look. "Tony." She had to struggle to get herself back under control, just then. "And what, exactly, did you think Tony had to do with this?"

"I -"

"You didn't think at all."

"Stop it. You've destroyed a whole _family_."

"He did that himself," Pepper snapped. "The financial ruin'll be the _easy_ part. It's large-scale abandonment that most kids find more difficult to cope with."

It was nasty and it was uncalled for and it made Sarah go pale and Pepper felt a flush of vicious triumph that lasted just long enough for her sister to throw her napkin down on the table and storm out.  
  
*********  
  
"Sounds like that went well," said Tony.

"You're an asshole," said Pepper, but there was no heat in her words. She was curled into a corner of the sofa with another - her fifth? Sixth? - glass of wine, barefoot and uncomfortable in her smart dress and her perfect hair, but far too tired to change, or to muss it.

"So are you."

"Hah. Yes. So I've but recently been told."

Tony sniffed. " _I_ wouldn't have done it."

Pepper raised an eyebrow. "Snapped at your sister or ruined a guy who was stealing from you?"

"Ruined the guy," said Tony with a shrug. "It's just money. You didn't _need_ to set Jarvis on to his BVI companies."

" _It's just money_. There's a sentence you'll never hear from anyone but a billionaire."

Tony grinned. "Yah think?"

Pepper glared. "Well, what do you think, Mr. Stark?"

"I think," said Tony suddenly, "you did it 'cause you didn't like being stolen from, which, hey, I can totally get behind, I blow people up who steal from me, it's an Iron Man thing, what do people think I built the suit _for_ , it can multitask, it's not _just_ a security blanket, but no, no I wouldn't have bothered about the BVI companies. But," offhandedly, "I'm richer than God, whatever."

Pepper thought about this for a minute.

"So I'm prideful and a bitch," she said, almost bitter, remembering how disappointed Sarah had been. Well, she'd always had a vague notion that Sarah was both intensely curious about Pepper's job and at the same time weirdly contemptuous of it, a kind of inverse snobbery... but how she managed to reconcile that with her own relatively privileged background Pepper did not know.

(She was, however, fairly certain that if her father had not run off and left Mom to fend for herself when Anna Potts was pregnant he wouldn't have worked his way up to any kind of privilege at all.)

"That I did know," said Tony solemnly.

"No take-backs." She was too old to pander to Sarah's sheltered feelings, even in the name of peace and quiet. She was definitely too old to _spare_ those feelings.

"Well, _no_ , God, how old are we, _seven_?"

 

*********  
  
Pepper didn't see Sarah again until a month later when the train her sister was on, headed to Budapest from Vienna, derailed near the Hungarian border. She'd never crossed the Atlantic in such a panic before. Tony held it together in much the same way, she suspected, that he held it together in a fight; it was so thoroughly unusual for her to be the one fidgeting while he kept calm that the surprise alone brought her back to herself before they'd been in the air for two hours.

"I don't know how you do it," she said suddenly.

He looked curious.

"Keep surprising me."

"I'm an unpredictable sort of guy, Pepper. Anyone would think you'd noticed that by now."

She sniffed. "You've always been predictable to me. But that's not what I meant."

Tony smiled, gentle, quiet, and she thought of the way he'd smiled on another plane flight nearly three years ago - _I don't want to go home. At all._ \- but there was no nervousness in him now, no grief. "You surprise me too," he said.

Pepper went to him then, slid into his lap and rested her aching body against his chest. She laid a hand against the arc reactor, spreading her fingers and watching the light glow between them. Strange how quickly it had gone from terrifying to comforting...

... bit like Tony himself, really, way back when.  
  
*********  
  
Sarah just about burst into tears when she saw Pepper. So did Pepper. Sarah was huddled in a hospital bed, looking as if she'd been beaten to hell and back, alone and drawn and pale. Pepper flung her arms around her and held on tight. The hospital was groaning with patients and police and rescue workers; there were so many people covered in blood or dust or mud or all three, silently terrified or screaming for loved ones - Pepper could feel the sense of suppressed panic in the building beginning to infect her, and God only knew how long Sarah had been here, friends scattered and not even able to speak the language well enough to find out what was going on.

Pepper knew she wouldn't be having that problem. Quite apart from Tony and Jarvis's babelfish programme in her ear, she was the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world; once word got to the higher-ups that Pepper Potts was in the building (and word would get there pretty quick, because Tony was out there in the suit heaving trains around and rescueing people) she'd be catered for.

"I snapped at you," said Sarah, sniffling; she sounded so young, far younger than she had a right to sound at twenty-six, younger than Pepper could ever remember being or feeling. "It was the last thing - I snapped at you and I ran out, just like - like Dad."

"Oh, sweetheart," said Pepper, helplessly. "You're a little idiot. You're nothing like Dad. What were you even doing, thinking about me when you were hanging upside down in a derailed train -"

"I was just so angry," said Sarah, eyes flashing again, and _there_ was the girl Pepper had come to -

\- oh, _crap_.

"- angry with everything. I wanted to get out of there and do things and I sort of thought - a train wreck, fuck this, and then I thought, you wouldn't let it - you've done so much. And you'd know how to handle - everything. Even when you're freaking out you always know what to do. And it was like - _I_ knew what to do, because I knew what _you'd_ do."

Pepper carded a hand through Sarah's filthy hair and couldn't manage a word. How had this _happened_ , she'd barely known the kid a year and a half. Dammit, dammit, _dammit_. How had this happened, _how_ , they still barely knew each other, they'd barely met twelve - fourt- twenty? Oh God. Oh God.

Oh God, if anything more serious had happened to her...

"And," added Sarah, "I'm sorry for insinuating things about Tony. I should've known you were perfectly capable of being an asshole all on your own."

Pepper burst out laughing. (Oh, let the kid think what she wanted. She'd done enough growing up this week.) Sarah giggled, a hysterical hiccup in her voice.

"Well, exactly," said Pepper. "I don't understand people who think I'm his Jiminy Cricket. I stood around watching him make bombs that got more and more horrific with every passing year, and when he decided to stop I told him he was traumatised and crazy and that I wouldn't stand around to watch him die..." She shook her head, oddly grateful for the change of subject. It had taken Stane's betrayal to show her just what she'd been tolerating, all those years; the terror all her considerable talents had gone into enabling. Left to herself she might have cut and run; or at least, looking back on it, she thought she probably would have, if Tony had died the way Stane intended. But Tony had lived, and held fast to the course he'd set himself, and Pepper had held fast to him. He'd had enough drive to keep them both on course.

Sarah leaned in and rested her face against Pepper's shoulder, much the way Pepper had leaned on Tony in the plane over here.

"Would you find out about Mark and Anjali and the others for me, please?" she asked softly. "And then -"

"Then you're coming home with me," said Pepper.

"I don't want to see Mom and Dad."

"OK."

"They'd drag me back to San Francisco. I couldn't stand that."

"All right, sweetheart. All right. We'll keep you in New York, you'll see."

Pepper had grown good - very, frighteningly good - at keeping the things she loved close to her since her mother had died.  
  
*********  
  
"So should I start calling you Little Potts, or is that -"

"Her name's _Greene_ , Tony -"

"I'm aware of that, thank you Pepper -"

"- and it's frankly disturbing that you're making a Grey's -"

"- ah but more disturbing that you recognised -"

"- Anatomy reference, do you watch that, really, isn't there enough -"

" - it so quickly, I need role models Pepper you don't think I come up -"

" - drama going on around here, I think you spend half your life inventing -"

" - with all this by myself, I resent that, Pepper, I really do, you don't even know -"

"It's like watching a tennis match," said Sarah, feeling slightly dazed. "I've met you before," she glared at Tony, "you don't usually do this -"

"Oh, well," he said, and grinned. "Now I know you get into just as much dumb trouble as the rest of us I can relax."

Pepper marked it down as a win when her sister laughed.  
  
*********  
  
Sarah turned out to be a cranky, nervous patient, eager to see her friends - thank God, they'd all live, though others weren't so lucky - and just as eager to get out of the hospital. Pepper thoroughly resented Tony's implication that she'd been much worse when she'd had her appendix out ten years ago.  
  
******  
  
A week later they made it home at last. Sarah was still paler than Pepper liked, ribs bandaged, broken leg in a plaster, but she'd been eating well and sleeping more, and her bruises were beginning to go down, her scrapes less painful. "At least this won't stop me from taking the bar," she'd said defiantly.

Steve was home, with a tablet computer and a bowl of cereal.

"Morning," he said, standing up and smiling. "You must be Sarah. I'm Steve."

Sarah angled her head up to stare at Pepper. "You keep Captain America in your _kitchen_ ," she said.

"And Iron Man in the basement," Pepper said dryly.

"Does it count if he likes it that way?" asked Steve.

"You see how it is," said Tony to Sarah. "Just because my name's on the building..."  
  
*********  
  
Of course, Sarah's parents worked it out; they weren't particularly _stupid_ , just bastards (to Pepper). Probably they'd heard somehow through her friends and their families; almost all of them had been astonished to discover that Sarah had any kind of sister, let alone one who happened to be Pepper Potts. At any rate, her parents were standing in Avengers Tower a week after Pepper had brought Sarah home.

Pepper wasn't there. For once in her life she bailed on an unpleasant task and handed her father over to Darcy, who would chew him up and spit him back out again without any trouble. (It wasn't until three or four days later that she found out that Darcy had had a word with Natasha and got her to spend the afternoon cleaning her guns at the table in Tony and Pepper's apartment. Pepper decided it was best to leave that one well alone.)

In the meantime, Tony took her out.

"Tony and Pepper's Day Off?" she said dryly.

"Life moves pretty fast," he said, unrepentent and grinning. "If you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you might miss it."

"That's deep of you, Ferris."

"Pepper, please. I'm Bender, you're Claire."

It was the offhand way he said it that made it resemble a kick in the teeth. Nobody ought to get to be Bender and mean it.  
  
*********  
  
"But the thing I really, really need to know is where the hell Nick Fury _lives_ ," said Tony around a mouthful of burger. They were sitting on a bench in Central Park in the sunshine, looking as utterly unlike Tony Stark and Pepper Potts as it was possible to look. Pepper loved it. "He's like a ninja robot. He's always there."

"So, he lives on the helicarrier," said Pepper. "Which... would be sort of sad, but -"

"But if he _does_ there's a possibility that there's security footage somewhere in those servers of Director Fury in footie pyjamas! Please dear Santa, let there be security footage Jarvis can access of Director Fury in footie pyjamas. You know, I haven't asked for anything since you failed so spectacularly at getting Dad to take me to the zoo when I was five, it's the least you can do."

"You know, I don't think you're going to have any luck with that. Santa's an ass."

"Santa's an ass," Tony agreed. "What did you ask him for?"

"Oh," said Pepper. "Same thing you did. A Dad." She licked sauce off her fingers and reached for the beer cans they'd brought along. "I don't think he does Dads. Santa, that is."

"They're obviously not his specialty," said Tony. They finished their burgers in silence, drinking beer and licking their fingers; Pepper had her legs crossed, foot bouncing thoughtfully; she'd had these Chucks for seven years, and they looked pristine. Her legs actually ached from walking in flats. Maybe it was time to cut back on the six-inch heels. On the other hand, if she did that Tony would probably stop kneeling in front of her chair when she came home at night and cupping his hand around her calf and drawing her shoes off...

Well, no, he wouldn't. But it wouldn't be as much fun. And there was no denying that she liked being taller than he was in her business outfits, it gave her back some sense of control that got so quickly lost whenever you came into close contact with Tony Stark. And she really liked her shoes.

Maybe one day a fortnight, or something.

Tony was drinking beer with his free hand flung along the back of the bench, resting behing her - bit like teenagers on a cinema date. He'd so often used to keep his arms crossed, like a barrier between them, when they sat side by side.

This was better.

"Well," she said at last. "Got any plans?"

He sniffed. "Plans are for battlefields. Did Ferris make plans?"

"Actually, I think he did. Anyway, you're Bender."

"I've changed my mind," said Tony with aplomp. "You're Andi, I'm Brand."

"I'm not walking any planks for you," said Pepper.

"Goonies never say die, Pepper."

"What's that got to do with planks?"

"Everything and nothing."

"I'm starting to think you're off your form."

"Out of my depth? Possibly?"

Rare was the occasion and special the person upon which and to whom Tony Stark admitted to being less than competent - not always perfect, but always, _always_ competent.

Pepper clenched her hands briefly. "When he calls," she said. "I. I don't block his number because - one day I might pick up and the first words out of his mouth will be _Pepper, I'm so sorry, and I love you_. One day. They might. They might. And as long as I don't have anything to do with him I can still believe that. So I'm not going back, and I'm not going to ask about him, and I'm never going to meet him. But I'm probably - I'm probably going to keep on picking up the phone."

Tony took his hand off the back of the bench and laced their fingers together. "I keep thinking," he said. "Maybe there's a note. Or a letter. Or a diary. Something... some sign that'll turn up out of the blue, something that got lost after they died, something that Stane maybe hid from me."

"You got it," said Pepper. "Every hope he had for the future, he put in you. For a man like Howard Stark, I think that was all he knew how to give."

"In which case," said Tony, "it's just as likely that dialing your number is the only way he knows how to say sorry."

It was nearly an hour later before either of them spoke again. Pepper's fingers ached with the grip she had on Tony's; the sun was beginning to burn the back of her neck. She'd been people-watching, and trying not to think, and remembering her Mom, a little.

"Let's go see a show," she said.  
  
*********  
  
"Nothing," said Tony, "where any of the characters have Daddy Issues."

"OK..." said the girl at the counter, looking a little flummoxed but recovering quickly. "I mean, it's a little frustrating from a feminist point of view that so many characters have relationships with their mothers that are so thoroughly sidelined -"

"No, no, trust me, we had relationships with our moms," said Pepper. "It's just that my Dad is an asshole and so was his and there's this whole thing with my half-sister and -"

"Basically, nothing that, like, _triggers_ any _feelings_ ," said Tony.

"Um," said the girl at the counter.

" _Lion King_ is right out."

"Well, maybe you oughta go see _Brave_?"

"Please, I could out-Pixar Pixar in my sleep."

"No you couldn't, you're a crappy storyteller," said Pepper. "Just, something fun. How about that. And no fathers."

"OK, yeah, I think we're clear on that point..."

"There's always _West Side Story_."

"Might as well go straight to _Mamma Mia_ ," said Tony.

"Of course, the plot of _Mamma Mia_ revolves around someone not having a Dad," said Pepper.

"... tempting, but no. No Abba. Abba is the devil."

" _Mamma Mia_ 's not actually showing right now," said the girl. She was starting to look amused. Pepper decided she liked her. "Tell you what. You should go off-Broadway and see _The Importance of Being Earnest_ , everybody likes Oscar Wilde, it's funny, it's cute, there's a happy ending and no parents whatsoever, and then if you take _this_ left and tell Jerry at O'Reilly's that Rebekah sent you you'll get the best apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream in the city."

Pepper leaned over the counter thoughtfully. "How attached are you to this job, Rebekah?"

Rebekah tried really hard not to look too delighted. "Erm, well."

"Hmm?"

"School," she admitted. "Engineering. Um." Her dark eyes slid to Tony. Pepper knew that look: it was the look of someone who thought Tony fucking Stark was God, and not for any of the reasons the tabloids would have named, either.

"Well," she said, and rapped her knuckles on the counter. "You know where to find us."  
  
*********  
  
"Oscar Wilde, really," said Tony doubtfully once they had their tickets.

"Funny and cute will do it just fine for me," said Pepper.

He grinned; she didn't need to be a mind-reader to know what was coming next.

"I consider you tolerably amusing when you're doing your job, no more," she said.

"And cute?"

" _Twelve percent_ cute."

"How much are you prepared to bet that you'll find me cuter than Oscar Wilde?"

"He's a corpse, that won't be difficult..."  
  
*********  
  
The next morning Sarah was still in the Tower, but her parents were not.

"You have terrifying friends," she said to Pepper accusingly. "And they've _all_ been calling me Little Potts. Can I strangle Tony?"

"No," said Pepper, very firmly, and shimmied a little in her seat, feeling dreamy and self-satisfied. "I kind of like him."

"I can't understand it."

"Then you haven't been reading the gossip columns very closely," Pepper said smugly.

"Aaaaargh," her sister said, blanching.

Pepper laughed; Sarah smiled back, although she thought it was somewhat... awkward. Shadowed.

"So, listen. The others are back OK, and they came round yesterday as well, and incidentally were appropriately overawed by your crib, I mean he was but Mom really thinks I've sold my soul now, she was horrified and she's a _pacifist_ so not even meeting Steve helped with that, he came up to make Natasha go clean her guns somewhere other than your kitchen table, it was adorable. That's Mom for you. She just _thought_ she was disappointed in me before... But everyone's doing better so Anjali says if I want to come home -"

"Do you?" The words were out of Pepper's mouth before even she noticed.

"Yes and no," said Sarah. "I don't." She drew a breath. " _They're_ still in the city. They'll be back tomorrow. I. I don't know how to send them home. I don't really wanna see them, I don't - want to be the daughter of a person who does what he did. But."

Pepper sat up in her chair again, crossed her legs. Business stance. _But that's my Mom and Dad_. "So see them," she said.

Sarah nodded slowly. "I don't want to turf you out of here."

"God almighty," said Pepper. "I don't care. In fact, I'm gonna love it. I'll move out for a week, it'll be gorgeous, no superheroes in the kitchen, no guns on the coffee table, peace and quiet. Well, actually, probably not so much as I fully intend to take Tony with me but you see my point, or so I assume."

"Well - yes. Pepper, he asked for you."

Pepper was ready for that. "No," she said simply.

Sarah nodded. "I told him that. I said he could go to hell." She looked angry. "He doesn't get to do that to you."

"Sarah, you - when you rang me." Pepper's turn to take a steadying breath, to lay her hands neatly on her lap, to hold herself still and concentrate on the act of speaking clearly instead of the fact that by doing so she was laying herself open to attack in a way that hadn't happened in a long time. (Whatever else she'd believed of or hated about or wanted from Tony, she had always, always known that -)

"Stay for as long as you need," she said. "This - if you want it, this is your room. For good. For as long as you want it."

Sarah lurched over and caught Pepper's hands in hers, overbalancing a little and ending up mostly lying in Pepper's lap, face hidden, pressed close: the way a child might, a daughter, a baby sister who'd known Pepper all her life, looking for comfort.

"I love you, Pep," she said.

Pepper bent her head over Sarah's, smiling. "I love you too."  
  
*********  
  
Two weeks later she emailed Tony a copy of Rebekah Wise's CV and typed _told you so!_ into the subject line.

Two days after that he sent her tickets for _An Ideal Husband_. Pepper laughed until she cried and was informed by Jarvis that yes, Miss Potts, that had indeed been Mr Stark's intent.


End file.
